


the friends we made along the way

by theclaravoyant



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: 4x14 coda, 4x15 spec, F/M, Gen, contains 4x14 spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-24 21:12:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9787208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theclaravoyant/pseuds/theclaravoyant
Summary: “But if it’s not her, then it must have been…”A chill ran down Jemma’s spine and she stepped back, away from the computer, away from him. - It?





	

**Author's Note:**

> I am in knots about the LMDs!! I couldn't resist the theory that Fitz is a surprise LMD, so I wrote a little bit and I'm pretty sure I'm even more in love with it now. BRING ON THE FEELS AOS.

“But if it’s not her, then it must have been…” 

Jemma trailed off, puzzle pieces locking into place one by one. Fitz had been close to Radcliffe and he’d been to the other side; he knew something of both the LMDs and the Darkhold, insofar as any of them did. He’d be a sensible person for the others to look to for advice on this. Making him a sensible person to switch if they wanted to keep cover, or – more likely - interfere with the cyber security of the base. And the Detector…he’d designed it, if not programmed it, and he almost certainly had the technical prowess to manipulate its calibrations, or edit the report that it would have sent to her. Until this moment, Jemma would have assumed many of their technical problems to have been courtesy of Daisy, but maybe they hadn’t been.

(Or maybe they had, and at this very moment, Daisy was in a similarly nightmarish zombie-land of her very own). 

A chill ran down Jemma’s spine and she stepped back, away from the computer, away from him. 

_It?_

“Fitz, turn around,” she instructed. Her fingers reached for the pistol at her belt. She didn’t want to believe it, but everyone else had been accounted for, including herself. He’d made her promise that she wasn’t one of them – but she had never asked him to promise back. 

_It._

“Jemma?” He obeyed, and her mind distorted his voice into a cloyingly innocent one, like a puppy just waiting to be kicked. He didn’t know what was coming, and when he saw her hand on her gun, he raised his hands into the air, quivering with fear. Mirroring her a little too closely for comfort, in fact. 

“What’s going on?” he asked, his eyes full to the brim with such excellent concern. “This is good news, Jemma! Daisy’s not one of them. The Detector must have just been calibrated wrong, maybe it picked up Coulson’s hand or Mace’s suit after all.”

“Maybe,” Jemma conceded uncertainly. 

How did she tell him – it – he wasn’t real? Would he understand? 

And how long had he not been himself? Hours? Days? Weeks? What if Radcliffe had been playing the long game and switched them out right at the beginning? What if it was even worse than that – after all, he’d had near-free reign on the design of so many elements. Mace’s suit. Daisy’s gauntlets. His designs were so skilled, and so trusted, that he could have used their own tools to cripple them if he’d wanted to. Perhaps he still could. 

She raised the gun. 

“Jemma?” Fitz squeaked. “Look, put the gun down, okay? Put it down. Just – just put it down…” 

“Why?” 

“I don’t want to hurt you, Jemma, please just – “ he sounded genuinely choked up, but he had the keyboard between his hands like he was going to knock her over the head with it. “I have to finish this.” 

“Finish _what?”_

 _Not him, not him, not him,_ her heart thudded.

 _No, not him,_ her mind pointed out. _It._

“I – I…” he trailed off. He couldn’t explain himself. Then, like watching the cogs turn in an old clock she watched his mind lock the pieces together itself, and then stall. His eyes were big and round and shining with agony and confusion, like he didn’t understand, but he did. He _almost_ did. The realisation was just at the front of his mind, just at the tip of his tongue but at the same time, just out of reach. And that in itself was confirmation enough. 

“Fitz?” Jemma checked. She couldn’t do this, she couldn’t hurt him – _it –_ until she knew. “Fitz. Promise me you’re not an LMD.” 

He shook his head. He tried. 

“Say it. Prove it, Fitz, _please.”_

_Not him._

_Not **you.**_

He lunged at her with the keyboard, dragging the monitor crashing to the ground after it as he swung. Jemma ducked and joined the fight with every ounce of calculated survival tactics she could muster. Her body sung with instinct alone as she tried to figure a way out of this fight. She couldn’t beat a robot. Even Daisy had barely managed. She had to end it fast or she’d be dead, as long as this Fitz thought she stood in the way of his objective. He had no control over his attacking her. Like LMD-May pulling a gun on Coulson, LMD-Fitz would take her down if it had to and Fitz, real Fitz, would never know. And maybe, just maybe, there was enough of Fitz in it to spare her, but Jemma wasn’t prepared to take that chance. 

She pulled the trigger. 

Once. Twice, for good measure, and for the end of it. LMD-Fitz stopped fighting and Jemma pushed his body off her and pulled herself back to her feet. She felt sick and her whole body was shaking wildly. It had never really been alive, but all the same, it could feel pain. It was pleading her with Fitz’ eyes, to save it. Its mouth moved wordlessly in nonsensical broken-circuited ramblings, but it was Fitz’ eyes she watched go blank.

She dropped the gun. 

It cluttered to the floor.

(Not the wisest idea, she thought later). 

In the moment, all she worried about was trying to figure out what was happening. 

To herself? Was she going to scream, cry, be sick, fall over? Or simply stand as the realizations crashed in?

To Fitz?

Fitz, dying in front of her.

Fitz, locked away somewhere they might never find, trapped and incapacitated and likely in danger while his decoy tried to kill them all.

“Jemma!” 

Daisy’s voice pulled her out of the swamping terror. She ran in, touched Jemma’s arm, saw Fitz. 

Saw Fitz dying. 

“It was him,” Jemma stammered. “The fourth one, it was him, he attacked me, I had to-“

Daisy cradled Jemma’s shoulders and led her away. She picked up the pistol on the way out. Safety. Regrouping. It was essential. The image of Fitz twisted and lifeless burnt in the back of her eyelids and she struggled to ignore it. The real Fitz was out there somewhere – the real versions of everyone in here, trying to kill them, were out there somewhere, and the only way they were going to get through to them was to get out of this. 

For now though, Jemma needed a moment, so Daisy covered her until they reached Daisy’s room. There Elena – the real Elena – was waiting. She presented Jemma with a bottle of water, and sympathetic eyes. Mack was out there too. So many hearts at risk of breaking, so many lives at risk of being lost; not just theirs, at the hands of the LMDs, but their kidnapped friends, who still could be hidden _anywhere in the world._

Waiting for Jemma to swim back to the surface of reality, Daisy paced and watched the computer screen. She’d tried searching for more scraps of code, and she was finally managing to narrow it down – or so she hoped – but it was taking too long. 

Jemma never did though. She burst out into reality with a gasp for breath, and only then seemed to realise where they had moved to. 

“Okay. I’m okay,” she promised. She looked between Daisy’s and Elena’s faces, her eyes sharp and alert. She was in rescue mode, her own trauma behind closed doors, both out of the way and fuelling her keen recovery. Daisy smiled. They needed this Jemma on the team. But Jemma looked disappointed. 

“Is this all of us left?” 

“Us and these.” Elena gestured to the arsenal she had been assembling on Daisy’s bed. “Once we found you, the plan switches to evacuation. Prepare to evacuate.” 

Daisy handed Jemma back her own pistol. 

“We’re our own extraction team now,” she said, demanding eyes boring into Jemma’s. “Think you can handle that?”

Jemma pressed her lips together and took the pistol. She’d been dumped at the bottom of the ocean and swum her way out, literally and metaphorically. If she had to fight a few more feet she wasn’t about to let that stand in her way, and certainly not in the way of saving the others. Shock, crippling fear, hesitation were long gone. Now, she had the fury and the passion of a woman betrayed, a woman in love, a woman on fire in her veins.

“I think I can handle that just fine.”


End file.
